Barack Obama, Social Security and the Final Irrelevance of the Black Misleadership Class

With a black president leading the charge to eviscerate Medicare, Medicaid and social security in the name of “deficit reduction,” what is there left of black politics? What is the relevance of so-called black leaders in the Democratic party, and the remains of our historic civil rights organizations?

Barack Obama, Social Security and the Final Irrelevance of the Black Misleadership Class

by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon

“In the U.S. which existed before social security, elders with dwindling assets and little savings unable to work simply went hungry, or were a financial drain upon younger members of their families until they died. This is the real world that corporate Democrats and Republicans intend to bring back.”

The masters of corporate media proclaim that their raid on social security, is a done deal. “Entitlements,” their code word for Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, will be cut in the lame duck session of Congress, with Democratic president Barack Obama taking the lead. Though the outlines of this raid have been clear for months, what passes for black America's political leadership class have been silent. As far as we know, they have not been ordered to shut up. They have silenced themselves, in abject deference to the corporate black Democrat in the White House.

It took a Republican Richard Nixon to open relations with China in the seventies. It took Democrat Bill Clinton to impose draconian cuts in welfare and end college courses for prisoners in the nineties. And today, only a black Democratic president can sufficiently disarm Democrats, only a black Democrat can demobilize the black polity completely enough for the raid on “entitlements” to be successful.

For the current crop of black leaders, the only legitimate “black” issues are voting rights, (but not for the incarcerated or formerly incarcerated) minority contracting, and funding for HBCUs and various “civil rights” museums and memorials. But in the real world where most African Americans families live, proposals to raise the retirement age,and cut Medicaid or Medicare are dire economic threats. In the U.S. which existed before social security, elders with dwindling assets and little savings unable to work simply went hungry, or were a financial drain upon younger members of their families until they died. This is the real world that corporate Democrats and Republicans intend to bring back.

The president, as BAR's Glen Ford warns, is about to triangulate himself between the extreme pro-corporate demands of his own “deficit commission,” and voters, in order to inflict a fatal wound on social security, Medicare and Medicaid. Many among the current Congressional Black Caucus are utterly unprepared to stand against the corporate onslaught to gut social security because it is backed by the same forces who have made their political careers possible, and spearheaded by a black Democrat in the White House. The NAACP and similar advocacy organizations too have neutered themselves with a generation of corporate financing and the “reward” of regular meetings with White House officials.

“If real black leadership existed right now, it would stand up for lowering, not raising the retirement age.”

In the real world, very few elders, and percentage-wise, even fewer black elders will be able to lead anything like a dignified life off retirement savings and 401K plans. If real black leadership existed right now, it would stand up for lowering, not raising the retirement age. Besides obligating millions who are physically unable to seek or sustain employment far into their seventh decade, raising the retirement age will add millions of unemployed elders to the work force, where they will compete with their own children and grandchildren for scarce employment opportunities. If black America had a real voice you'd hear it on the radio and TV explaining that lowering the retirement age would open up millions of jobs for deserving younger workers. You'd read in black newspapers and magazines that a modest rise in benefits would encourage more people to retire, and that those benefits would be immediately spent to fire up the economy, unlike the hundreds of billions in “quantitative easing” doled out to banksters who aim to use it to buy up foreign assets.

Inflicting a fatal wound on social security has been the aim of America's business class for generations. It is a project upon which some of them have spent billions. Thanks to our lack of a functioning black press, or electronic media that address black audiences, most African Americans don't know who billionaire Pete Peterson is.

Peterson is a billionaire who announced his intention almost 20 years ago to spend every last dime of his net worth to kill social security. Peterson has used his vast wealth to bankroll conferences, to endow university chairs and departments, to pay for tens of thousands of “studies,” press releases, fabricated broadcast and print news and opinion pieces in hundreds of outlets in every conceivable media market. Peterson Foundation dollars go to hundreds of smaller organizations which place platoons of talking heads every month everywhere from C-SPAN to your local black talk radio station, church and local black chamber of commerce. All of it pushes the fraudulent notion that social security is “a Ponzi scheme,” unsustainable, a drain on the nation's finances, and won't be there when people currently in their thirties and forties get old anyhow. A decades-long campaign of fear, uncertainty and doubt has been waged against the American people to prepare for the final undoing of the New Deal and Great Society programs of social security, Medicaid and Medicare. But it's a campaign most of us are barely aware of.

Parallel campaigns have turned what used to be a core of black political leadership into corporate slaves, and done away with black broadcast and print news, and made journalism an all but extinct profession. The American people are unable to see their own opinions reflected in the media they consume, in the politicians they elect, or the policies their governments enact. We are nearly defenseless, and despite black faces in city halls, state houses, the congress and the White House, black America is more defenseless than anyplace else.

“This new black leadership will have to appoint itself. There is no baton to pass.”

Until a new cadre of black political leadership arises, a leadership not dependent on corporate funding, a leadership indifferent to the fortunes of the Democratic party, a leadership accountable only to the millions of ordinary black families can bring itself into being, we will continue to be defenseless. It will have to be a leadership that organizes communities around their actual problems, like mass black incarceration and gentrification, education, broadband access and sustainable local economic development. Like the activists of the forties, fifties and sixties, it will have to be a results-oriented leadership with a much longer view than what can be accomplished in this or the next two sessions of Congress. It will have to be a leadership unafraid of picking fights that it might lose. None of these are characteristics you find among black Democrats or their local organizations.

This new black leadership will have to appoint itself. There is no baton to pass. It will have to organize locally around the country before its impact can be felt on any national scale. Some of it may come from places like the Chicago Teachers Union, which is standing up to corporate school reform and rooting itself firmly among parents and neighborhoods. Some may come from among the many forces involved in the Black Is Back efforts next week in DC, and ongoing. And certainly, whoever manages to create a far-sighted political mobilization in black communities around the question of black mass incarceration will capture the enthusiasm and risk-taking spirit of black youth, so long absent from the American left. It's being worked on. Believe it.

But right now, the disciplined and complicit silence our current crop of black political and advocacy leaders, our Black Misleadership Class have maintained up till now on the coming social security, Medicare and Medicaid raids, has finally and conclusively proven their irrelevance. It's time for something completely different.

Bruce A. Dixon is a member of the state committee of the Georgia Green Party, and managing editor at Black Agenda Report, based in Marietta Ga. He can be reached at bruce.dixon(at)blackagendareport.com.

Poor Congressman Rangle. Left out to dry by the CBC, Pelosi and the Dimocrap leadership. Lesson to Charlie, "When you have done tremendous work for your constituents they'll probably rally to your defense--vociferously."

In contrast, when you have nothing to show for your years of "leadership" but insider dealing, the "masses" stand mute.

Memo to Charlie: "If you were RELEVANT your constituents would be coming to your defense." You are not even relevant to the Dimocrap leadership. Should have taken a cue from their treatment of Roland Burris. They didn't actually "bust grapes" to get him seated. Burris get's stiff-armed over the Blago affiair tarnishing his political career, Rahmn get's the Chicago Jewish Mafia's backing and the Prez's blessing to be Mayor of Chicago.

Rahm's conversations with Blago don't see the light of day. Burris politically done, Rahmn "rising star." So much for being the "Donovan McNabb" of politics, playing the "go along get along game." Oh, you might have "class" but that won't stop the Elites from treating you like a lil bitch and pimp slapping ya." LOL

p.s. C.N. Beck is a pathological liar and in the first segment, didn't watch it all or the others yet, he calls Van Jones a Communist, puhleez, that's like Tarpley saying Rev. Wright was a Black Liberation, militant, racist intent on fomenting Black/White divisions. Rev. Wright fomenting Black and White divisions? That shit is accomplished by fucking with the White Man's paycheck and social security, that's all the catalyst needed--White economic insecurity.

Part 2 & 3 gets deeper than a Ocean Jack.. The ADL attacked Beck because of those segments.

Soros throws his money around in leftist circles for his own sinister political aims. It's like with the ColorofChange people. I signed up to their email list and all I got was emails about attacking Fox News instead of Wall st.

I got maybe one email about pushing Obama on the net neutrality stuff, everything else was focused on monitoring Fox News for any perceived racial slight or Obama attack. I sent them a email telling them to take me off their got damn mail list, because I was not Interested in being a useful idiot for Obama and the financial terrorist George Soros.

As for Mr. Wright, I'm in the process of doing my own research and checking Tarpley' FOOTNOTES.

I think that some of the tabloids get info leaked to them in the same way that the "papers of record" do. Whether the leak gets reported on or not may depend on whether the right people still find you useful to them. If they don't ................. I think these people already have things mapped out and they know the weaknesses of their puppets.

I'm also seeing a lot of cannibalism.. Please take the time to watch this excellent 3 part expose` of George Soros:

For the Washington Post or NYT's to report on something like this, there has to be people in the elite looking to either put pressure on Obama to stay "centrist" on the economy and Israel, or they're looking to remove him from office.

I have a friend, who in her inability to understand Obama's weaknesses, posits that he's probably being black mailed. This is not a person prone to conspiracy's and was a full-fledged Obama supporter ( in other words someone unlike me). Her comments arose during a conversation where I tried to explain that he was inherently weak (prone to concilliation) and a Blue Dog. She wasn't quite ready to accept my premise, but instead felt that the power brokers were holding some shit over his head.

I don't know or really care. But I do agree that the Oligarchs are sending him messages. What's more disturbing for me were the messages sent or "stories" below the Nanny piece, the surrealism perpetrating as news:

"I didn't want to shake Michelle's hand."

"Pelosi is garbage."

"Palin attacks Wall St."

WTF?? Are we now living real time in Real World MTV, American Idol, or Housewives, is our "news" now reduced to tabloid? One would certainly think so from the midterm elections. Is this the type of garbage that is now political news? And you all expect American to solve her problems? Now "that" should make a reality show all on it's own.

Maybe the writer should have done a piece called, "The Ugly American Revisted," instead of linking Obama to a queer nanny, because I assure you, that's the way the rest of the world views us, ugly and stupid.

Great posts so far, Peasehead, if the cowardly Black Misleadership class would grow a pair that would be making your argument, succinct and irrefutable.

To morongobill, Lord knows I hope you're right. I'm tettering right now on skeptical to cautiously optimistic. Peter Daou wrote a piece during GWB's reign, hope I can find it later. Sometimes you read something, mostly anything here at BAR, other bloggers too, Chris Hedges's "The Elites have lead America off a Cliff," comes to mind, "The Greatest Threat to the Western way of Life is theWestern Way of Life," by Kozy,Chris Floyd's "The Pentagon Plan to Foment Terrorism," both of these come to mind, and I'm omitting many others over the years. But sometimes you read something and it just strikes a "tuning fork" chord. Daou wrote something like that, I read it years ago. (He's since joined the establishment, I know)

Sometimes its an "ah ha," moment, but all too often, for me, maybe because my brain wiring or my cynicism, the "ah ha moment" turns into an "Oh shit!" moment. And I guess as the "Peoples Insurance" (Medicare, Medicaid, Social Sec.) is concerned I'll find out, or "we" will find out which it is.

Peter Daou wrote a poignant essay whose conclusion was, putting it into my own words, that one reason GWB got away with so much shit was the mental, emotional fatigue factor visited upon the populace. A variation of rinse and recycle. I believed he called it "Scandal Fatigue." People could'nt keep up with Bush's crimes, he piled criminality on top of criminality with a heaping helping of hubris, snarkiness and arrogance on top. And of course the poor, rotten Dimocraps capitulated and cowered at his every move (or were complicit in oh... 75% of it)

The populace basically broke down mentally dealing with his shit. The Oligarchs knew this so we got Obama's blank slate and tabla rasa. Hence forth the masses projected their "hopes" on him, projected their dreams and aspirations on him. With Obama's huge disappointment and sellout, at what point will mother f***ers JUST BREAK DOWN??!! I'm waiting impatiently to see if that cycle will repeat itself with Obama, hell it might repeat itself with any Oligarch "ho" in the White House, can't take if for granted, can we? I mean there aint no damn democracy without mass protests at this point in time.

I guess in the next few months we're going to find out who is still a "slave," gonna find out who's less than a person. Gonna find out if Obama cops to his own "Dread" Scott Decision and see how the minions react. Lord knows I hope they storm the gates; but this is a defining moment folks. Everybody is going to have to look into the mirror when these bastards put the burden of taking care of our parents on us. Parent who worked their asses off all their lives, so that some fucking twits from Ivy League schools, connected by Daddy's $$ and prep school connections, can reap millions fucking the economy and the American consumer, stealing our tax dollars, and then hoarding them.

The rubber is about to meet the road. Stay tuned. "I wanna be in the number," but shit, might be prempted by reruns of Tyler Perry on Oprah Winfrey, know what I mean? All bullshit aside, are the people mad enough? Or are they bowed by scandal fatigue??

This isn't the particular article I recall but it gives some sense of it's flavor. I know we don't want to think about GWB, Halloween was a few weeks ago, but it is worth thinking about him a bit. Also, like I told my very intelligent brother about poverty in America and Detroit: The Media just won't report it. You've already witnessed how they conflated the Tea Party into a national movement? Bush's Base, a friggen people's movement? Puhleez. Last, as it relates to the MSM, too many missing White folks still to be found. Justice demands it. My heart cries out for it. LOL

Stay tuned, will Blacks finally wake up from the Obama dream turned nightmare, to the utter uselessness of Dimocraps and Black "leaders?" Gonna find out real soon. In the meantime, as a fall back plan, keeping the Passport handy and getting Rosetta Stone under the Xmas Tree. "Feliz Navidad."

This time the elites and their stooges think the populace is either so docile or cowed or brainwashed, that they can pull this catfood commission fast one on us with the help of the budget cutter-in-chief.

It ain't gonna happen if we bloggers have a damned thing to say about it. Normally I wouldn't believe that our brownshirts would beat the old folks but now I really don't put anything past them.

The headline of my post is lifted directly from events playing out now in Germany, where the people, thousands of them, did their best to stop the "death train," I haven't had a chance to do a followup, I hope they won.

But even more so, I hope we the regular people win this fight against the elites this time, we have to draw a line somewhere, saving our social security is it, this is the issue, this is finally the one we can win on, if the people are awakened from their main stream media induced slumber.....

Let's give these rich bastards hell, send them straight to hell, and their lackeys and toadies.

I have had it with the so- called representatives of the people, paid the big bucks to supposedly look out for grandma and grandpa, when in fact, all they are doing is look out for their own sorry asses, and in the process, kick the ole folks to the curb.

WASHINGTON — A draft proposal released Wednesday by the chairmen of President Obama’s bipartisan commission on reducing the federal debt calls for deep cuts in domestic and military spending starting in 2012, and an overhaul of the tax code to raise revenue. Those changes and others would erase nearly $4 trillion from projected deficits through 2020, the proposal says.

The plan would reduce projected Social Security benefits to most retirees in later decades — low-income people would get higher benefits — and slowly raise the retirement age for full benefits to 69 from 67, with a “hardship exemption” for people who physically cannot work past 62. And it would subject higher levels of income to payroll taxes, to ensure Social Security’s solvency for the next 75 years.

But the plan would not count any savings from Social Security toward meeting the overall deficit-reduction goal set by Mr. Obama, reflecting the chairmen’s sensitivity to liberal critics who have complained that Social Security should be fixed only for its own sake, not to balance the nation’s books.

The federal tax on gasoline, now 18.4 cents a gallon, would increase by 15 cents between 2013 and 2015, so that revenue from the tax and similar user fees could cover all transportation and highway spending programs, and the funds set up for that purpose would no longer require money from the general treasury.

The proposed simplification of the tax code would repeal or modify a number of popular tax breaks — including the deductibility of mortgage interest payments — so that income tax rates could be reduced across the board. Under the plan, individual income tax rates would decline to as low as 8 percent on the lowest income bracket (now 10 percent) and to 23 percent on the highest bracket (now 35 percent). The corporate tax rate, now 35 percent, would also be reduced, to as low as 26 percent.

Even after reducing the rates, the overhaul of the tax code would still yield additional revenue to reduce annual deficits — a projected $80 billion in 2015.

But how low the rates are set would depend on how many tax breaks are reduced or eliminated. Some of them, including the mortgage interest deduction and the exemption from taxes for employees’ health benefits, are political sacred cows.

The commission’s chairmen — Erskine Bowles, the president of the University of North Carolina system and a former White House chief of staff under President Bill Clinton, and Alan K. Simpson, a former Republican Senate leader from Wyoming — said their plan was “a starting point” for the nine other Democrats and seven other Republicans on the commission, who met Wednesday behind closed doors.

That was clear from the reactions of their colleagues, none of whom embraced the whole package. Several of them made clear that they would not support it without big changes.

Among Republican members, Senator Michael D. Crapo of Idaho said it needed to focus more on spending cuts, and Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, who called the plan “a significant step down the path of establishing fiscal responsibility,” added that he looks forward to “improving on it.”

Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota, a moderate Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, said without elaboration, “Some of it I agree with; some I strongly disagree with.” And Representative Jan Schakowsky, a liberal Democrat from Illinois, said she favored steps to restore Social Security’s long-term solvency but not the chairmen’s regimen. Liberal groups immediately condemned the blueprint.

The group, appointed last winter, had made no decisions in advance of last week’s midterm elections, to avoid politicizing the painful options for reining in projected yearly deficits that are building up the federal debt to a potentially dangerous level. Even so, the election results — by emboldening victorious anti-tax conservatives and defeating many fiscally conservative Congressional Democrats — are widely seen as having reduced the already slim chance that a supermajority of the commission could agree to a package of proposals by Dec. 1.

Under Mr. Obama’s executive order last February creating the panel of 12 members of Congress and six private citizens, 14 of the 18 commissioners must agree in order to send any package to Congress for a vote in December. The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, and Representative Nancy Pelosi, who will remain the House speaker until January, have promised in writing that the Senate would vote first and, if it approves a plan, the House would vote as well.

Should the package of proposals fall short of the necessary 14 votes in the deficit commission, as many people expect, proponents of deficit reduction, including some administration officials, hope that at least some of its recommendations could be the basis of efforts to pare deficits once the economy fully recovers.

Appearing on ABC This Week, Hitler-like Senator-elect Rand Paul, did exactly what Lyndon LaRouche stressed in his Saturday webcast that he would do—propose cuts which will destroy the nation if implemented.

As Lyndon LaRouche said on Election Day, last Tuesday, we will not really know the results of the elections until at least Sunday, following his webcast on Saturday.

What is quickly emerging is the reality that the choice is between what we do and chaos.

On Sunday, on ABC This Week, Rand Paul put forward the very policies which will lead to the destruction of the nation and on Saturday Obama revealed himself to be a post-election new Republican, as Lyn said in his webcast, by emphasizing his willingness to impose the same kind of nation-destroying creative destruction policies advocated by the likes of Rand Paul.

LaRouche said in his webcast:

"Rand Paul's policy is a dangerous one: His policy is: We got to balance the budget. He's nuts! He's talking about balancing the monetary accounts!

"What about our unemployed? What about our dying citizens? What about the states that are bankrupt, when most of them are? What about the destitution being wreaked upon our people? Is this in our Constitution? How did tha SOB get elected in the first place? And there are people like him! This is the policy of the New Obama Administration! The second term of Obama is an administration, based on the policies of creative destruction, by that fascist, Schumpeter and his predecessors, Nietzsche and so forth: Which is a monetarist conception.

"We have accepted the self-destruction of our nation! And Rand Paul typifies that threat! You cannot be a supporter of Rand Paul, and a true patriot of the United States.... If we compromise with the Rand Pauls, we're not going to have a nation.

"Rand Paul's initiative, is simply a deep cut, in population potential of the United States and of the planet. This guy is worse than Hitler! In terms of his policy, and the policy he represents.

"Do you compromise with that? NO! Those of us who understand the Hitler phenomenon, understand how it was created, say: No! Nyet! No!

"No Hitler, No Hitler-like policy. Rand Paul has a Hitler-like policy. We can't compromise with him. He calls himself a Republican. What's that? What's a 'Republican' mean any more, huh?

"A president who's insane, is now being given Republican backing, for his insanity!

"Get him out: He's now the New Republican. He's a post-election Republican — and you're going to find out that's true, very fast, and very painfully. He's going to make Hitler look like a humanitarian, hmm? That's what you're dealing with."

In an ABC interview with Cristiane Amanpour yesterday, Rand Paul recommended Cato Institute Tax Policy Studies director Christopher Edwards's book, Downsizing Government, for a detailed list of what government programs could and should be cut. Edwards summarized those proposals in testimony before President Obama's Deficit Commission last June 30, and since the Nov. 2 election, he's gone hogwild on his Cato "Downsizing Government" blog, giving instructions to GOP and other "fiscal reformers" of what must be axed. "The election ended the debate over whether to cut federal spending, but the debate about cutting particular programs has just begun," he claims.

The Rand Paul fascists and Obama's Cat Food Commission are on a fast track to implement their policies, with the planned release on December 1st of the Commission's legislative recommendations. High on their list is privatizing Social Security, and eliminating Medicare and Medicaid.

In discussions yesterday, Lyndon LaRouche ridiculed Democrats on Capitol Hill who are busy being "demoralized" by the results of the election, rather than taking on the fascist economic policies being pushed by the likes of newly-elected Sen. Rand Paul—in cahoots with Obama and his Deficit Commission, aka the "Cat Food Commission."

"The very existence of our Republic is threatened by these bastards. And they have to be defeated. Don't capitulate to them; defeat them. The United States was not created by cowards who prematurely accepted defeat.

"That's why I did what I did in my Nov. 6 webcast: take this bastard on! He's a piece of crap; so I took him on and identified him as a piece of crap right away. Rand Paul, with the same policies as Obama's 'Cat Food Commission,' is trying to bring his kitty litter to the table. That's the best way of putting it: You'll get the right shudder of disgust, which is needed to begin to understand Rand Paul.

"If the Republicans are going to blockade the proceedings in the House, during this period before January, then they are going to blockade all the agenda, including their own agenda, such as the 'Cat Food Commission.' You've got to hit them with their own operation; always defeat the enemy with his own strongest operation, by flanking it. How do you flank the attempt to blockade any legislation in the lame duck period? Block their legislation; use their own medicine that they're organizing, against them. Flank the bastards. Stop saying: 'We've got to submit to their forces.' Come on; flank the bastards!

"We're going to flank the bastards, not react to them. Hit them. I set the pace with the Rand Paul thing. Rand Paul is the target. Hit Rand Paul. Concentrate on him. And you're going to start a rumble.

The real sources of destructive entitlements are almost never mentioned, yet alone discussed in a serious manner by those in the so-called mainstream media. The members of the ruling class in this country still feel that it is their birthright to lord it over people in other parts of the world, especially where there are natural and human resources to be extracted. No one knows how much of the national wealth is squandered maintaining the instruments of this entitlement (to rule the world), a vast, unweildy military which dwarfs those of all of their potential enemies and allies combined, an equally massive surveillance apparatus for foreign intrigues, and an enormous internal survellance and incarceration system. All of these institutions continue to grow exponentially in both cost and scale under the guise of "national security", and they appear to be answerable only to the elites who created and control them, not to the average taxpayer. In spite of the government's continuous cries of poverty and its alleged fear of ever growing deficits, when it comes to coporate welfare, it's business as usual. Enormous tax breaks and other forms of subsidies are paid out to wealthy individuals and to large corporations including multi-nationals annually to the tune of billions and billions of dollars. For example, according to a recent series on NPR, this government pays a subsidy to cotton farmers which ranges from one to four billion dollrs a year and pays another 150 million or so to farmers in Brazil to placate them rather then comply with a series of WTO rulings which state unambiguously that US subsidies to its cotton farmers (many of which are operating extremely large scale enterprises) are in violation of free trade rules. Don't expect any of the so-called austerity hawks on either wing of the interchangeable party state who are so eagar to savage programs which largely cater to the working class and to the poor, or to the lower middle class, to make any serious, or sustained attacks on any of the big subsidy programs which benefit them, their colleagues, or their corporate backers. Let's see if the members of the so-called Tea Party as hostile to wasteful government spending programs in those cases when the primary recipients of the wasteful spending are Whites, especially wealthy, well-connected Whites.

Correct. He's NEVER wanted them to win. The history is well documented with Rahmn's hand-picked, pro-Zionist, pro-Military, pro-Corporate Democratic Congressional Candidates. Rahm and Obama's first "achievement" was working hard to sideline progressive Democratic Candidates. (Just like they sent Clinton down to Florida last month to pressure Meeks into dropping out in favor of the former Republican Governor of Florida, so Crist could "caucus" with the Democrats. Who gives a shit, we see the "fruits" of Joe Lieberman's caucusing with the Dimocraps.

Remember, the Rethugs had punked the Dimocraps so much, aided and abetted by the Press or US Pravda, on being "tough." Liberal is now a 4 letter word, and Dimocraps crap their pants at the notion the public will view them as weak on the military, notwithstanding the draft dodgers that populate the Rethug leadership, Bush included.

Yes my friend, "He really wanted them to lose." Now he has political cover for his Catfood Commish recommendations. Another one of his grand "Bipartisanship" Achievements. "The Rethugs made me do it, this is a mid-course correction, the people said too much government over-reach, blah blah blah." Whiny lil bastard. I don't know if Obama is a punk as much as a died-in-the wool Neocon. Maybe my fault is I keep reacting "emotionally" in assuming that he's weak, because it's hard to rationalize a real man taking a punking like this. Even "sissies" reach a breaking point. But given Obama's EAGERNESS to capitulate truth is, he sees the world they same way as the Oligarchs.

Truth is: America is a conversative, reactionary country. "You win elections by going to the center," you win elections by the Independent vote." Okay, fine, I get it. Then goddamnit stop lying about living in a liberal democracy. In other words you win elections by what is in today's standard, Rethuglican-Lite. Perhaps if people, Blacks especially, can look into the face of the beast and recognize it's fangs, they would not waste so much time and energy on working "within" the system. The system isn't designed for our progress, red, yellow, black or white.

Aint been no town hall meetings in Detroit or Atlanta or Newark to talk about the pain and/or solutions, but he'll drag his ass out to "stir them up for an election," that is.... sometimes, when it increases the opportunity of winning for the conservative candidate of his choice. Ask ol Kendrick Meeks if you don't believe me.

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